The strange, sad death of the American way

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George Bush's war imperils a cherished political tradition, writes Paul McGeough.

There is a growing sense that Americans have become victims of September 11 in a way that has blinkered their democratic instincts.

So now the hard questions are being put in a pre-September 11 context. Would Americans ordinarily tolerate a president who lies and exaggerates? A leader who uses fear to manipulate his people to his own ends? A president whose staff blow the deep cover of a CIA agent as political payback? A president whose Administration channels billions of dollars to crony corporations on false pretexts? A president who deems torture acceptable?

Would they accept a president who seems to agree with his advisers that he is above the law?

The commentator William Rivers Pitt poses them all before concluding: "The time has come, bluntly, to get over September 11; to move beyond it; to extract ourselves from this bunker mentality which blinds us while placing us in moral peril. It happened and it will never be forgotten, but we have reached a place where fear and obeisance can no longer be tolerated."

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Bush, Blair and Howard would dearly love to move on, to shelter in that obedient, obeisant world and their shallow argument that the global community must deal with the reality on the ground in Iraq; hoping, too, that we'll just slip-slide with them, over and around their recklessness in dragging Iraq into the War on Terror.

But legitimacy is truth and questions of legitimacy will keep drawing us back to the propriety of their decision-making on the road to Baghdad - the lies, the half-truths, all the obsfucation. This is not just a history lesson; or a debating point for Americans and Australians as they luxuriate in their democratic right to vote on the performance of their leaders in the coming months.

In less than two weeks the US-led occupation of Iraq gives way to the saddest little "sovereign" government the world has seen in a while.

Its legitimacy is in doubt and, therefore its viability, as much because of the false-pretence by Washington, London and Canberra to justify war as by Iraqi suspicion of the democratic fundamentals of interim government by appointment, by the continued occupation of their country and by a firm foreign grip on their treasury purse-strings.

And while some will dismiss all of that, arguing that time will tell, the greater reality on the ground in Iraq is that the chaos and death from a mismanaged foreign occupation is a product of all the lies.

Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney can't help themselves. Only hours before the September 11 reports were published, Bush was talking up the sketchily known activities of the Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi as the "best evidence" of a connection between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. It was another lie. Cheney was at it a few days earlier, claiming there were "long-established ties" between Saddam and bin Laden.

Almost buried in the blitz of reports on the commission's work was yesterday's statement by a group of 27 former US diplomats and military leaders - many of whom were appointees of this president's father and other Republican administrations.

These are men who have done time in the Middle East, in Moscow and in the highest levels of the US military, and this is what they said: "[The Bush Administration] justified the invasion of Iraq by manipulation of uncertain intelligence about [WMD], and by a cynical campaign to persuade the public that Saddam Hussein was linked to al-Qaeda and the attacks of September 11."

"From the outset, President George W. Bush adopted an overbearing approach, relying on military might and righteousness, insensitive to the concerns of traditional friends and allies, and disdainful of the United Nations ..."

John Howard's unquestioning support for Bush puts him in the same dock as the US President.

My anxiety on the road to battle was about the number of don't-know questions that underpinned the Bush-Blair-Howard case for war and the leaders' remarkable certainty.

Now we find that the unnecessary Iraq war has sucked resources away from the War on Terror. Bin Laden is at large but Saddam is in captivity; Iraq did not help al-Qaeda or bin Laden and it was invaded, while Pakistan, which did help al-Qaeda and did sell its nuclear know-how around the Axis of Evil, has just been elevated to the exclusive ranks of "major non-NATO ally" by George Bush.

Other realities are confusing.

The White House insisted that US forces would be welcomed in Iraq with flowers and songs. But only 2 per cent of Iraqis see the Americans as liberators - and that's according to a poll by the US occupation authority in Iraq.

Biological and chemical weapons? I've been carrying self-injecting syringes of an expensive nerve gas antidote in my first aid kit since before last year's war. I'm off to Baghdad again tomorrow. It's a city where I don't need - never needed - the antidote. But truth serum would not go astray in several other capitals.